You wont find that here also, as the title suggest, I have only listed five. Why five?, because I don’t think that there were 10 really good ones. The ones listed here have tried to do a little something different, tried to add value.

Bixee is a search engine, for jobs. No big deal there, there are several other job search engines out there. But what makes it really good is that it searches through all other job-sites, like Naukri and Rediff. This makes the life of the time limited job hunter much much easier. Of course Bixee has had its problems. Unlike the rest of the world, where sharing of data across websites is encouraged, where mash-ups are considered key to the success of a company, Bixee ran into a few companies, namely Naukri, who weren’t to keen on sharing. Kudos to Bixee, they made a few waves, its the only way to make a change.

Okay so the idea behind Pixrat is not original, Its Flickr for India. But hey someone was going to do it, so why not the Pixrat team. It allows simple uploading of your pics, which you can tag, and then allow others to add comments to them, or rate how good they are. You can create you online albums, and share you favourite pics with your friends. Surf the web, see a nice picture, and collect it on pixrat.

Some of you may say, why the two above, well aside from the features listed, and what they do, if you take a close look at there homepage, in the upper right corner you will see a common logo ibibo. Clicking on this, will lead you to the parent company of Pixrat and Bixee. Although these two started out on their own, they have since been purchased by MIH Web services, which is part of Naspers, the South African media conglomerate. In other words, the two above are possibly the first two dot-com companies to have been acquired in India which launched last in 2006.

In the strictest sense, Like is not really Indian, but we’re going to claim it. Like started of life as Riya, which had developed visual search technology. Riya morphed, or should I say the technology was used not for facial recognition, like intended, but instead by an on-line shopping website. Have you ever wanted to search by the shape of a shoe you like, or the look of a watch, and you just cannot describe it, well you can now. All you need to do, is to highlight the area of the item you like, e.g. the heel of a shoe, the colour you like, and Like.com does the rest.

Personally instead of developing another on-line shopping website, I would become the technology provider behind all the current shops, offer it to eBay, Alibaba and others. Simply brilliant.

A search engine; had to have one of them, simply because Google is boring, and overrated. Guruji, is nothing exciting, well not currently, but I had to include it, since its impressed a few VC’s into offering it a few million dollars in funding. So what is Guruji? Simply put, when you search using Guruji, you search Indian websites only. In addition it has a link with Infomedia yellow Pages, to provide city-wise classified listings.

This should be a great search engine, but…there had to be a but, I did a simple test. I compared Guruji to google.co.in, and typed in the word “Chinese”, I have to say google pulled more relevant info. So why have I added it here? I think google will not be king, just as it toppled others before it, google will itself fall, that’s what makes the Internet so good. Guruji is way ahead of others in India, and if the money is used correctly, it could gain a foothold. The biggest challenge is getting people to use it. Google beater, nope, but a good Indian search engine, yes.

It had to be done, and google hasn’t done it, for those who use google maps to get around, you must take a look at MapmyIndia, Beta site. They have mapped India, every road, you can find directions from anywhere to anywhere. If Google does not simply buy these guys, someone else will/should. Once the API’s are opened up to allow others to mash up there websites, and there contact pages with the map, we will never get lost again.

Others

A few others, that have not made it to the top five list, but in their own little way they have all added to Internet.

Burrp – Lets you let others know about the cool restaurants, bars and clubs, currently available for those in Mumbai, but a good start all the same. At least I now know where to eat.

DimDim – A free solution which lets you do what webex, breeze and a few others let you do – share your presentations, collaborate over the web. But unlike others its free. Some ISP should host this model and offer it to users

SystemAli, I did take a look at pagalguy, and it looked very intriguing, only problem was it wasn’t 2006.

Can you give a little more info on pagalguy though. How many users, how long has it been going, just some general background of the people running it and I’ll see if I can throw up a quick review, to see what others think.

I dont have an email newsletter as yet, but if you use any of the popular email clients, they should be able to pull in a RSS feed. All you need for that is to add in my feed URL, which is on the homepage, right-hand column